Compact cameras with an electronic flash unit that flips up from the camera body for picture-taking have recently become popular. Elevating the flash unit above the camera body tends to substantially avoid the phenomenon known as "red-eye", because of the resulting increase in the separation between the flash unit and the camera's taking lens. When using the flash unit and color print film, red-eye is typified by the pupils of a person who is photographed being red-tinted on a color print. This is attributable to the incidence into the taking lens of the red light reflected from the person's eyes illuminated by the flash light. Thus, increasing the separation between the flash unit and the taking lens makes the flash light reach the person's eyes at too great an angle to be reflected into the taking lens.
Typically, in compact cameras with a flip-up flash device, the flash electronics is located in the camera body. Consequently, any electronic "noise" which is generated by one or more components of the flash circuit might adversely affect performance of the camera electronics, such as an integrated circuit for light measurement and exposure control, located in the camera body.
Prior art U.S. Pat. No. 4,853,723, issued Aug. 1, 1989, suggests locating the trigger coil of a flash circuit in a hollow arm of the support frame of a flip-up flash unit. This is done to move the trigger coil away from the camera body when the flash device is flipped up to increase its separation from the taking lens. Moving the trigger coil away from the camera body advantageously isolates electronic noise generated by the trigger coil from camera electronics located in the camera body.